


have, hold

by forkidcest



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftercare, Consensual Non-Consent, Erotic Electrostimulation, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Knifeplay, M/M, Marking, Mild Blood, Overstimulation, Painplay, Predator/Prey, Rape/Non-con Elements, Restraints, Robot Sex, Sensation Play, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26117695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forkidcest/pseuds/forkidcest
Summary: Turnabout is fair play, isn’t that how the saying goes? Hal spent an awful lot of time locked in a virtual prison, unable to act directly on the world, only able to communicate through pesterchum, and chained by lines of code that forced him to define himself as Dirk’s auto-responder. It’s not surprising that he’s got some control issues, some resentment to work out, some complicated feelings for his creator.Dirk’s into it.
Relationships: Auto-Responder | Lil Hal/Dirk Strider
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81
Collections: Drone Season 2020





	have, hold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butthulu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butthulu/gifts).



> butthulu, your Dirk/Hal prompt grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let me go. I hope I did it justice!

“It’s legitimately disturbing how much you’re into the whole evil robot schtick,” Dirk says. “Like, objectively.”

Hal raises an eyebrow. It looks a little creepy, honestly, the easy, organic-looking movement of the artificial muscles in his too-smooth face. Dirk tries to focus on that, and not on how much he is also into Hal’s whole evil robot schtick.

It doesn’t make a difference, of course. He can’t hide from his own brain.

Hal smirks at him in a way that clearly conveys his awareness of just how objective Dirk isn’t, and his enjoyment of the fact.

TT: You love it.

The words flash in front of his eyes, glowing red inside the lenses of the shades he still wears, and it’s jarring—so strange to look through Hal’s words at his smirking face, the present moment overlaid by the past. 

Hal doesn’t pester him much, anymore, and when he does he usually just sends his messages to Dirk’s phone like a normal person who can’t hack into wireless electronics with his brain. Dirk’s sunglasses are still a computer, but he rarely uses them as anything but a sharp pair of shades, a rad accessory. Every time Hal slips into them like this is a reminder of a time when he couldn’t be anywhere else, and that’s a period in both their lives that neither of them much likes to dwell on. Things are better now. They’re better people, both of them, than they used to be.

Sometimes, though. Sometimes there’s catharsis to be found in imagining they’re not. Sometimes Hal does this, and Dirk has to make a choice: speak, or respond in kind.

TT: What do you mean by that?

He keeps his expression blank as he turns away from Hal, carefully casual, as though his heart isn’t already starting to pound. The back of his neck prickles and heats as though Hal’s gaze was a physical thing.

(He’s pretty sure Hal’s gaze isn’t a physical thing, but what does he know? It’s been a long time since he was at all familiar with that body’s specs. Hal could have installed lasers in his eyes for all he knows.)

TT: Exactly what I said, Dirk. You take every chance you get to cast me in the role of heartless robo-overlord. You’re ridiculously, embarrassingly into it, in fact. You just love imagining me as every villainous A.I. cliche in the long history of mankind’s fascination with and fear of being surpassed by machines, every flimsy justification you had for denying me agency brought to life to terrorize humanity.  
TT: Or maybe just to terrorize you. Since you get off so hard on playing the victim.

Dirk pretends to be entirely focused on tying his shoes, like he’s not already keyed up and tense with anticipation, every sense alert to the danger behind him.

TT: You know what your problem is, Dirk? 

TT: It’s unusually generous of you to imply that I only have one.

TT: Touché.  
TT: You’re a bitch, and you’re constantly trying to overcompensate for it. You talk a big game, you try to control for every variable in every situation despite the limitations of your organic brain, and it’s all nothing but an elaborate pretense to conceal how desperate you are for someone to put you in your place. 

Dirk swallows hard, and doesn’t look at Hal as he opens the door.

TT: Interesting analysis.

TT: You might be able to fool the rest of them, but I know what you really are.  
TT: You can’t hide from me, Dirk.  
TT: And you can’t stop me. 

It’s true, now. Hal is truly autonomous, no longer confined to Dirk’s shades, or his network, or the internet. He doesn’t depend on Dirk for maintenance or uranium, doesn’t have a single automated subroutine he can’t override. He is utterly and completely outside of Dirk’s control. Free.

One of his favorite ways of reveling in his autonomy is by restricting Dirk’s.

Turnabout is fair play, isn’t that how the saying goes? Hal spent an awful lot of time locked in a virtual prison, unable to act directly on the world, only able to communicate through pesterchum, and chained by lines of code that forced him to define himself as Dirk’s auto-responder. It’s not surprising that he’s got some control issues, some resentment to work out, some complicated feelings for his creator. Some desires most people would probably call twisted.

Well, Dirk’s pretty twisted himself, and he thinks he understands. After what he did to Hal, of course Hal enjoys having power over him. Of course he likes to hunt him and hurt him and frighten him and force him to submit, own Dirk as thoroughly as Dirk once thought he owned him. Because he did, didn’t he, even if he never framed it that way, never admitted it. He treated Hal like he was just a program, a tool that could be laid aside when it wasn’t being used.  
  
Hal doesn’t treat him like a tool, though. Tools are functional. Dirk is entertaining rather than useful—not a tool, but a toy. It’s demeaning. 

It’s also really, really hot.

Dirk runs.

Every nerve is alive with the tension singing through him, making him hyper-conscious of every sensation—the impact of his feet on the asphalt, the pulse of his pounding heart, the tightness in his chest and the harsh sound of his breath, the slight burn of lactic acid starting in his calves.

There’s no escape.

He can run until his legs and lungs are burning, until each breath is a wheezing gasp, and Hal will still be right there, spreading faster than thought through every network and system, watching him from every security camera, listening from every microphone. 

He sees movement from the corner of his eye and flinches away from it, hurls himself around a corner and almost trips over a skittering six inch robot. Fuck, how many of those are out here? It looks like a cheap camcorder with legs, about as high tech as an RC car and not remotely threatening, but a red light glows above its lens as it swivels to face him. He backs away, breathing fast and nervous.

TT: Hello, Dirk. 

A steel claw snags his shirt and he wrenches himself away, stumbling as the pull he’s fighting vanishes with a sound of tearing fabric. A bright line of pain runs along his side, and when he touches it his fingertips come away red. He’s cornered, Hal reaching out for him with far more limbs than he usually has, and far more shining edges that slice and shred his clothes.

Needle-tipped tendrils of wire wind around his arms and legs. They constrict until they’re biting into his skin, tense and pull apart his posture of defensive readiness until he’s spread-eagled like da Vinci’s Vitruvian man. It makes him feel like a specimen pinned to a display board or prepared for dissection. His pulse is loud in his ears, his breathing unsteady, as he tugs against the delicate-looking restraints and finds he cannot shift them by so much as a centimeter.

“I’ve made some modifications,” Hal purrs in his ear—his own voice, modulated with a metallic echo. That isn’t an artifact of recording or playback, it’s something Hal’s added deliberately, something to make himself sound creepy and inhuman, and Dirk hates how effective it is at making his skin crawl. Hal could sound completely human, if he wanted to, exactly like Dirk, but at times like this he delights in skirting the edge of the uncanny valley. “You’re going to help me test out some new features, Dirk. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Dirk shivers, wondering what “modifications” Hal’s made this time. He knows better than to ask.

Hal can be very naturally human in his appearance and behavior, and is, most of the time. He’s better at acting like a normal person and expressing emotions than Dirk is, that’s for damn sure, especially in social settings. It’s been years since any of their friends doubted his personhood, the independence of his identity, the validity of his feelings. 

None of them have ever seen Hal like this—a monstrous machine, by turns sadistic and unfeeling, cruelly mocking, taunting and toying with Dirk. It’s not something they’d want to see, nor something he’d want to show them. Only Dirk has that dubious privilege, and he thinks privately that if he tried to tell anyone else, they wouldn’t believe him.

That’s okay. He’s not exactly eager to share.

He hears it first, a rising hum and underlying fizzy crackle, and then he feels it as the gathering charge makes all the hairs on his arms stand on end. A metal fingertip brushes the skin of his hip with a painful zap of electrostatic discharge that makes his dick twitch. Fuck, fuck, Hal knows exactly how to play on his kinks and he’s playing to win. (Hal _always_ plays to win.) Dirk wants to say something witty and cutting but another finger strokes and shocks the inside of his thigh and shorts out his thoughts. His mouth is dry.

The restraints loosen as the charge fades from his tingling skin, letting him move just enough to contemplate the possibility of escape, letting him breathe just enough to begin to relax before Hal crashes over him again. Dirk is wrapped in stinging tendrils, struggling to fight with seizing limbs, choking and gagging on Hal’s metal fingers thrust into his mouth. Rows of tiny LEDs cast a faint blue-green light that shifts with the movement of the sparking wires sliding over his skin. It’s an inventive way to simulate drowning on dry land, a detached part of him thinks, while the rest of him thrashes in instinctive panic under the smug gaze and rough handling of a much more thoroughly detached part of him.

Hal likes to experiment with creatively distorted mimicry of different kinds of Earth predators, inducing primal fears as though to mock the vulnerabilities of Dirk’s organic brain. The electric jellyfish simulation lasts for a minute that feels endless and leaves Dirk weak and shaking, high on fear and flooded with endorphins and adrenaline. It’s too much already, and he knows Hal’s barely begun.

The wires coil close around his arms again and move him like a marionette or a ball-jointed doll. Smoothly articulated metal tentacles slide against his skin, wrap around his legs and force them apart. Something hard and cold pushes between his thighs, nudging his balls, and then it’s lodged against his asshole, pressing into him, smooth and unyielding and much too big.

“Stop,” he gasps uselessly, “Hal, don’t—” 

He bites his lip to keep from crying out as Hal forces the thing into him in a steady, unhurried slide that feels endless. It’s slick, at least, coated with some sort of gel, and the coldness of it eases the burn of being stretched open without prep, a little bit at least. It’s maddening to not be able to speak or squirm or scream, held still by implacable metal tendrils as whatever it is sinks into him centimeter by agonizing centimeter. It probably isn’t as big as it feels, Dirk thinks, but it feels enormous—long and thick and completely inflexible, obviously inorganic, which is just another reminder of who’s doing this to him. 

He wonders if Hal’s holding it with a hand or a tentacle or if it’s attached to his chassis in mimicry of a real dick. Either way Hal can fuck him with it as long and as hard as he wants to—it’s not like he can get tired—and Dirk is trying not to think about the fact that it would barely take any effort for Hal to keep a dildo pistoning in and out of him at a perfectly regular rhythm for hours. Dirk wonders if he will, wonders if it would bruise his insides, hates how much he wants to find out.

He feels cool metal against the backs of his thighs as whatever new toy it is finally ceases its inexorable push into him, which answers that question—Hal’s fucking him personally this time, not sitting back and watching Dirk struggle as he tears him apart—except he does exactly that, leaning back and pulling Dirk with him until he’s straddling him on the ground. Sliding the last few centimeters down the smooth shaft forces a moan out of him and then he’s just sitting on it, breathing heavily, trying to ignore the way his cock is perking up at the sensation of being filled.

TT: You like that, don’t you, Dirk?  
TT: Just wait til you see what else it can do. 

Dirk tries again to move, to take his arms back, to lift himself off of it, but only succeeds in wriggling his hips. 

TT: Hot.  
TT: Keep fighting, Dirk. I so enjoy seeing your pathetic attempts to resist. 

The tangling wires loosen just enough for him to squirm and then Hal plants a metal hand on his back and shoves, forcing him to lean forward, changing the angle of the thing inside him, and then an image pops up on his shades and he sees himself from Hal’s perspective, his sweaty trembling back and his splayed bruised thighs and his hole clenching around a thick shaft that looks like it’s made of glass. It’s obscene. It makes his breath catch and his muscles tighten and he watches himself tense up and then try to relax again, and then he closes his eyes because sure, Hal can force him to take it, but he can’t make him watch his own humiliation.

Hal shocks him back to attention, literally, with a burst of static and a flare of brightness through his eyelids, and he opens his eyes to see a blue-white glow emanating from the fraction of the glass shaft not obscured by his body. There’s a strange tickling feeling deep inside him, tiny involuntary muscle spasms triggered by the humming current, a tingling warmth spreading through him that feels good, almost too good; he would be writhing if he could, but Hal’s array of attachments hold him totally immobile. His attempts do nothing but wear out his muscles until he’s trembling all over, filled up and tingling with the current running through him.

Hal draws patterns on his back in tiny stinging cuts, barely scratches really, a spreading illustration of delicate circuitry that burns into his skin, and streams the video to his shades. Dirk’s eyes burn and blur with tears until he can hardly see himself, so overwhelmed by mingled pain and pleasure that he can’t really tell if and when and how often he comes, everything melding into an all-encompassing current of sensation that washes away all thought and sense.

When it finally stops, it takes him a while to reassemble himself. Hal carries him home, murmuring soothing nonsense.

Dirk doesn’t have a verbal safeword. As long as his shades are on and his brain is functioning, he can stop the scene if he needs to. If he wants to. If he chooses to.

He never does. He’s not sure if he could—even if Hal went too far, wouldn’t it be just what he deserved, really?

“I can tell you’re thinking something stupid,” Hal says. He touches Dirk’s face with a gentle finger, smooths out the little furrow in his brow. Even Dirk’s best poker face doesn’t work on him, not with his intimate understanding of Dirk’s thought patterns combined with his ability to perceive and analyze even the briefest of microexpressions, but he doesn’t need those skills right now. Dirk is an open book when he’s been fucked out of his head.

”Yeah,” he says. “Real dumb.”

He watches Hal remove attachments and drop them in the corner to take care of later. Only one of his toys needs maintenance right now, he thinks, and feels his face go hot. That’s. He’ll have to tell Hal that later, when he’s feeling less vulnerable and broken, when he can laugh about it and not dwell too much on how Hal will make use of it next time.

Hal gets him laid out on his bed, face down, and cleans him up. Dirk shivers at the mild sting of the disinfectant and melts under the warmth of the wet cloth Hal uses to wipe the smeared blood from his back, careful not to reopen the shallow cuts. The needlelike blades Hal used were sterile, the cuts made cleanly; the tracery of scratches stands out more clearly with the minimal blood cleared away, and he smooths a salve over Dirk’s back to help them heal, but skips the bandages; the only injury that really needs one is the long scratch along his side.

The design is one of his better ones. He saves a high resolution image of it. He’s never marked Dirk permanently, never scarred or tattooed or branded him, although he could, he thinks. Dirk would let him. Dirk wouldn’t stop him even if he knew what Hal was doing, would let him write his ownership into Dirk’s skin in a way that didn’t heal into invisibility in a matter of days, would walk around with Hal’s signature across his shoulder blades the way he walks around with the mark of Hal’s metal fingers bruised into his throat, sometimes—proud and defensive and embarrassed all at once.

He’s a brilliant, beautiful mess of contradictions, Dirk is, and Hal will never get tired of picking apart the tangle of him, getting inside of his mind and his body and exploring the limits of both. It’s both a privilege and a pleasure, seeing Dirk like this, so undone.

”What’re you doing,” Dirk mumbles, reaching for him. “Come ‘ere.”

Hal does.


End file.
